


Quintessence

by saberoffate



Category: RWBY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saberoffate/pseuds/saberoffate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Aura-soul theory is great and all since the mindset gives you better control. But to uncover your inner potential? You need to face the cold, hard truth. Embellishment won't do any good." Everything you're saying seems embellished to me. "And the truth is?" I interject, hoping to steer back the conversation. His eyes gloss over me. "Aether."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quintessence

Even if you've accepted loss, the longing is unbearable.

* * *

 

The Reproachful Truth

I was prodded by dull, pointed thrusts, not unlike the phallic member of a cat in heat. The gentle, disgusting raps in my head urged me awake.

"Phoooo...", a soft whistle.

_…Reed? Why are you here stupid cat? Don't tell me you could fly this whole time._

"Phoo…", another hoot, accompanied by harsher, more intense taps. We're getting closer to the climax.

_Go fuck with something else. My head won't get pregnant._

"Poo."

_With a mighty thrust, something came out with much force._

A gust so invasive I thought my ears popped blood from the pressure attacked me, bringing me to the edge of consciousness.

"Gah! What the fuck!"

After attempting to swipe what hurt me (to no avail), my eyelids immediately parted for want of waking. In those black orbs came not the feathery visage of a bird that took a how-to-be-an-asshole class and graduated valedictorian, but the image of the bounteous stars drowned in dreamlike darkness.

If someone were to ask me "How was your sleep?" I'd usually say, "Pretty well, all things considered." But today's a bit more complicated because I woke up losing my ears, well kinda. The word 'lose' is a bit of a stretch, but it certainly felt like they got torn off by a giant, screaming pigeon. So I sort of lost them, but not really. That would be ludicrous! More like they got exposed to a live action storyboard for a hentai, set at a thunderous volume.

"Guh! Hah!" I gasped, forgetting that I was a weak-lunged boy in need of intense cardio. Cold. Cold. COLD. Where's my jacket? Ah great, uncle Carl has my jacket. Uncle Carl is a pain to wake. Therefore, uncle Carl is a douche. Impressive deduction, Balt. I looked to my left and instead of an old man drooling, I found the empty ground staring back at me.

"...Uncle Carl?"

"...", the ground eloquently replied, as always. I used to think that everything had a language. That people were just too complexly wired to understand the simplest of things, like rock speech. When I told this to my first pet, Rory the Rock, he just stared at me. My heart sank from this. When Auntie Kyle saw me all depressed and nigh suicidal, she told me there was a term for people who could actually communicate with the inanimate. 'Stupid' she called them. Well, at least I wasn't one of these 'stupid.'

"Where the hell is everybody? Where's the plane?" Quick body check.

"Naked? Really?" My body hurt, but miraculously, I wasn't fatally wounded, though it irked to see me unclothed on the ground. When I realized I was safe, my attention turned to the cold. I felt a brush of the wind against my pelvis, tickling a particular region very lightly.

"Alright, Balt. This isn't the first time you found yourself naked in an unfamiliar place."

I was on a plane before all this. If I was sprawled out here, then there must have been a crash, but where's the debris? And how the hell was I able to survive it and emerge nude? It doesn't add up.

_Cold._

I set my sights on something warm to wear and spotted a black, Yankees baseball cap. I covered my manhood with it, not caring about the molds inside. The wind pierced like frosted daggers. I'm not letting the most sensitive organ in my body feel that. It wasn't a good look, but I didn't have time to care.

_List what you know now. Worry about what to do with them later._

I looked around, seeing trees that led to, oh will you look at that, more trees. This dearth of sights worried me immensely. "So I'm in a dark forest. That's bad." I wondered aloud. Talking out my thoughts helped the brain mill grind. "Dark means nighttime, the most dangerous period for a man to be when in a forest." Alone went unsaid. I was sitting on the cold rough ground with nothing but my own skin and a black, Yankees baseball cap as protection. I screamed my terror internally, relieved myself externally, then planned accordingly.

"The sooner I find civilization, the better my chances of survival." It was time to move. But before I could, a series of blue boxes appeared in front of me so unexpectedly I swore DJ Heart skipped a beat, and made up for it by suddenly pumping faster.

**[ Now exiting {#$ &* # 45^# *} ]**

**[ Now Entering {Cliffside Forest} ]**

"Gah!?", I cried out in surprise. This… isn't possible. Okay, I'm seriously considering Uncle Carl slipped something in my system. That damn geezer always made me eat weird stuff, like my assload of meds. It's either that or I'm going crazy. Probably the latter.

"Cliffside Forest huh? Well, at least I know where I am now. Dunno about that gibberish, though. Is that a new font?" The boxes abruptly disappear, and I am left staring at the empty space to where they once were.

"Status." I murmur with slight hope.

…

…

Well, it was worth a try.

So I walked. One hand at the side and the other at my unmentionables. As my dad would say whenever we get lost, look for signs of home. Given that all I see are trees I don't recognize, following his advice would be useless. Thanks, dad. You're a real helper. Perhaps the stars would help. I look up the shattered night, in an attempt to find Polaris amidst the plethora of scintillations.

"That's weird, it's not there. Maybe the Big Dipper is…wait. No. It's not there either. Not anywhere. By Nietzche's godly mustache, these constellations are all-"

Foreign? Different? So numerous your substandard eyes can't handle it?

"They're all wrong."

Did I eat something weird before sleeping? Was one of the passengers a hypnotist!? Or was this a fantasy world created by my mind, moments before it expired, brought about by sleeping while the plane was crashing into oblivion and all that?

The stars, however, did not bother me so much as the large entity accompanying them. The moon. "Will you look at that. It ain't a circle no more," My legs quivered slightly in each beat. The implications of this were quite deadly and frankly, very unrealistic. I stopped walking to look at it with scrutiny. It was broken, in the literal sense. The pieces were reminiscent of a crooked smile. Happy. Delighted. It was damn creepy.

"This is lunacy!", I exclaimed in fearful surprise and renewed awe of my unintended pun. It's official. I'm either in another world or in the future of mine. Perhaps I was going insane? My psychologist certainly thinks so. Heck, I was thinking so right now.

_Focus. Worry about this later. Right now, food and shelter take precedence._

"With all my heart," I mutter, "I hope Uncle Carl didn't spike my drink with some magic mushroom again."

I walked on once more in silence.

* * *

 

 

I've been on-foot for a while now and my bottoms were sore from the lack of footwear. Although the broken moon is a sight I don't relish, I'd have to say it's effect on the scenery is quite pleasant. If it weren't for the lack of a camera and my apparent nudity, I would've taken a selfie. The shadows flickered gently, back and forth as a dancer's bounce. Twig by twig, the night-entangled trees loom around my naked form. The night speaks- as if my ears were beset with a thousand incomprehensible whispers all at once.

Turn back. Turn back. Death awaits.

You're a dick.

17-38 ey.

Just do it.

My mind's playing tricks on me. Perhaps I'm dehydrated. Or insane. I'm cold. So cold. I feel like—

Iced, creeping dread washed over me and nearly sent my mouth out on a scream.

My head looked around in fear. "The hell!?" I was attacked by a sense of apprehension and trepidation. I froze. I could feel something watching me from afar. A grizzly bear? Probably. Those things hunt at night. Porcupines? I wouldn't want to step on one while it slept. Maybe a masked, cannibalistic human? Darwin's beard, maybe all of them combined together. Nah, that's just silly. Or was it? Moments passed and I realized standing there like a zebra shot with a sedative won't do me any good at all. I adjusted the position of the cap in my nethers and strolled past. Aimlessly, but warily. Trudging on the roadless path, green and leafy, all the while covering my manhood with a baseball cap. Left and right were trees that have been here for quite a while, from their massive girth a. I would have taken the place for a peaceful park, were it not for the lack of a road and the presence of claw marks on that tree right there—a multitude of jagged lines etched in a criss-cross fashion.

Wait, claw marks!? That would mean-

" **ROOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR**!", a guttering sound. One that made me jump like a chicken and squeal like a pig—ready to be killed in the next moment—and land painfully on my arse (did I mention butt naked?).

CRAP THAT STINGS! There better not be a rock stuck in my ass. If Uncle Carl saw this, I know exactly what he'd say with that pompous, grandfatherly voice of his.

 _"I bet you'd like it more if it were a stick. A_ loooong _one."_

Swiftly standing from my supine form, I looked around for any signs of the predator, which apparently was just in front of me. Freshly awoken, just my damn luck. Of course, upon seeing the goliath, I ran as frantic as I could. I did not piss in my baseball cap when I saw that monster. I certainly did not wear a baseball cap filled with my own urine and accidentally drink some while screaming. Okay, maybe I did, but it was only a smidgen. I'm no Bear Grylls. Speaking of bears…

Apparently, the one chasing me was. How do I know despite the darkness and my adrenaline-fueled vision? Well, bears are territorial animals. So they make an effort to mark their territory. Usually, they strip off the bark of trees and use it as bedding material, sort of like peeling a banana. Add in the patches of black fur in those marks and there you have it, a telltale sign of a bear. And the fact that I hear four simultaneous thumps—a quadruped I deduce—just cements my conjecture. Ignoring the sting in my eyes and the foul liquid dripping down my head, I make it past countless trees, weaving in a zigzag fashion in an effort to confuse my pursuer. The work, however, proved fruitless as the four-legged monstrosity seemed to rampage indiscriminately through the trees.

**"ROOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR!"**

"FUCK MEEE!"

I could feel the bear getting closer. It's raspy, ragged breaths getting louder each tree I pass. I could imagine it; The hungry look in its eyes as it chases; its brown fur tainted red; and its mouth previously dripping with saliva would gnaw and grind fleshy old me. Just as I began to entertain thoughts of letting the bear eat me, since running wasn't worth the effort anymore, I noticed something from afar. A glimmer of hope. It was a cliff just begging to be jumped on. With some sort of box embedded in the middle. A grave perhaps?

 _Wouldn't that kill you?_ Annoying-uncle-voice asks.

Dumb ideas often start brightly.

Yep. Until you try them that is.

Hey, great ideas begin as prospects too. You'll never know what category they lie unless you try them.

_Famous last words._

"MY ASS STILL HURTS! SOMETHING'S STUCK DAMMIT!"

_Your famous last words right there. Haha!_

They say that whenever you're running from something—whether it's a killer, a dog or your mother —never look back. If there's one thing survival and horror movies taught me, it's this. Looking increases the chances of you tripping and slows you down quite a bit, which might prove all the difference. Then it's game over. I turned my head slightly. Just a wee bit, to check what was embedded in my asshole. A harmless peek.

With devastating consequences.

And I tripped over a root. Again, landing on my ass, now fully facing my pursuer. Unfortunately, there was something inside my ass.

"MOTHER—"

Definitely not a rock.

Turns out, it wasn't just a bear. It had a menacing white mask that hid two glowing red eyes. Armored plates covered its body and to complete its appearance, it had long bone-like protrusions along its back.

A masked, cannibalistic, porcupine bear. Wonder of wonders. Damn otherworld bullshit.

**[ Codex Updated: {Ursa Major} ]**

Not now!

* * *

 

_And now to our top story: the missing airliner. As announced previously, the location of the plane that vanished is still unknown. The aircraft disappeared from radar as it traversed the Pacific Ocean, coming from Los Angeles and was inbound Japan. Public officials fear that this trend of disappearances could negatively affect the Airline Companies. The disappearance of flight PR 148 is the ninth instance of vanishings in the course of three months. While it is still unclear what is causing these aberrations, investigation…_


End file.
